The term “war on terror” was absurd in its ambiguity – terror is a strategy or tactic, but certainly not an identifiable enemy – but Obama has jettisoned even that phrase to define his administration’s weak response to the threat posed by those who would murder us in the name of their religion.

“Islamists,” meaning those who embrace radical Islam and its political objectives, would have been a better word than “terrorists.” Not all Muslims are terrorists, and not all terrorists are Muslim, but it is the threat of radical Islam that is the principal terrorist threat to the United States of America and our interests. Now, the current administration can hardly acknowledge the existence of a terrorist threat, let alone its nature or origin.

“Napolitano renames terrorism “man-caused disasters.” Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management.” ….

“If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.” ….

“Any government can through laxity let someone slip through the cracks. But a government that refuses to admit that we are at war, indeed, refuses even to name the enemy — jihadist is a word banished from the Obama lexicon — turns laxity into a governing philosophy.”